


Amnesiac Adam

by noblewriting



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017), Disney - All Media Types, Disney Princesses
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, two fucking idiots falling in love again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 19:26:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12688698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblewriting/pseuds/noblewriting
Summary: The curse is over, but its marks remain. When a relapse brings back an Adam from the past, can Belle find hope for the future? Amnesia, a garbage prince, and married Adam/Belle.





	1. Chapter 1

“He was having some strange dreams, last night,” Belle confides to Mrs. Potts. “Tossing and turning…I think he might be sick with something.”

“They do say magic leaves it’s marks,” says the good housekeeper wisely.

“They say that?”

“Well, no, they don’t. But I shouldn’t wonder if there were some strange after-effects. I expect it takes a powerful lot of magic to keep us all here in the dark, and him a beast, for so many years.”

“So…there still might be some magic around?”

“A passing qualm. I shouldn’t worry, dear,” and Mrs Potts pats her hand, and goes to fetch the bread and butter.

Belle sits back to think. She loves Adam; she surprises herself daily with how deeply, how intricately she loves him. Every detail is so utterly like him: the way he grumps when he’s just woken up; the way he argues with her taste in books, and beams when she retorts; the way he relaxes in every muscle when she comes in. She loves Adam, and his comfortable blue coats, and the way he shares her books, and holds her hand, and picks her up and spins her just for a lark.

And it’s right then—as she’s smiling, now, at the memory of Adam laughing at their wedding as he sweeps her up in his arms—that she smells it.

It’s like burnt charcoal; a dry flavor is in her throat, the last coughs of the curse. When she runs into Adam’s room and flicks back the canopies of the bed, she still sees the glowing sparks as they flick and fade around his sleeping self, turned away from her, toward the wall. There is a glow of golden smoke, and then the magic dies.

“A passing qualm,” Belle whispers, to steady herself. “Just the last gasp of a dead curse. Only magic. Only magic.”

He stirs in his sleep and flips over, so she can see his face. Belle just catches back a yell.

Moments ago, he looked like Adam. Now, someone has drawn blue and black plumes shooting from his eyes.

She leans closer. It’s just makeup. Plumette’s handiwork, clearly. But where—and when?—she was in this room moments ago, and his face was clean and sweet. And Plumette is in the other wing, busy arranging flowers for tonight’s ball.

Adam’s eyes flick open, and they are frosted blue. There is a tense moment: Belle, ready for the magic, stares down at her husband without a word.

“Send for Lumiere,” he murmurs, and flips back over again.

Belle retreats, and is almost at the hall when he calls again.

“Oh, and girl? Shut the door on your way out.”

 


	2. Bread and Butter

“Um, Your Highness?”

“Lumiere. I told you not to call me that.” Belle is sitting in the kitchen, eating bread and butter with Mrs. Potts. It’s been an hour since Adam woke up; though Belle doesn’t normally engage in it, stress eating does not seem out of order.

“But you are married now!” He sounds relieved to be talking about the opposite of whatever he was sent to talk about. “We must think of some way to refer to your new royalty!”

“‘Belle’ is good enough. Lumiere?”

“Oui, your utmost majesty?” He is stuffing his face with bread and butter. Belle is not the only one who wants to stress-eat.

“Did you come to tell me something? Something about Adam?”

Lumiere regretfully puts his bread down and sighs. “Oui, Belle. The Prince…..he is acting like himself.”

“Oh! Wonderful! Must have just been early-morning grumps, then.” Belle has already started up to see him when Lumiere gently pushes her back down. 

“I did not say he was acting like his _new_ self, .” 

“What? What ‘new’ self? He isn’t acting like a Beast again, is he? He’s still human.”

“Oui, Belle, but…..he is acting like the _Prince_ again. Like he was the night…the night the Witch came.”

Beside her, Mrs. Potts gasps. “Oh, that’s bad,” she murmurs. “Very bad indeed.”

“As if no time passed at all?” Belle is clenching the table without even noticing. “No Beast? No curse? No….”

“No you,” says Lumiere. He shrugs, sadly. “I mourn the change as well. He is my friend, more than my master. To have the love dimmed from his heart again….”

“It’s just the last puff of magic,” says Mrs. Potts, though the firmness in her tone is belied by the slight quiver in her hands. “It’ll blow over by midnight. You may rely on it.”

“I’m going to go see him,” says Belle, and she’s straightened her apron and taken off before the servants can stop her. She is always headstrong; but never more so than when Adam is at stake.

“I think I’ll send Chip to the village,” says Mrs. Potts, in hushed tones. “He’d almost forgotten what the Prince was like.”

“If she cannot save him,” says Lumiere, gesturing after Belle, “I will set fire to the magic myself.”


	3. Witchcraft

“My slippers are over there.”

He doesn’t even look up when she comes in. He still has the eye-makeup on, though, and he’s up and moving; wearing his most pretentious dressing gown, the one that he was joking about using as bonfire fuel just yesterday.

“Fetch your own slippers.”

She stands in the doorway, outlined by the summer sun. He slowly turns to look at her.

“I won’t stand for impertinence from the staff.“

“I’m not the staff,” says Belle, “and I shall be as impertinent as I like. Or worse, if I shall like it better.”

“You dare to—you dare to defy your _Prince_?!”

“If I’m his Princess, then yes.” Belle flashes the ring on her finger. “Care to make a match, your majesty?”

He stares at her in shock. Slowly, his eyes wander to his own hands. The matching ring sparkles in the sun.

“What—what _sorcery_?!—how did you—”

“ _You_ were the one who proposed,” says Belle. 

“I—I defy you! This is witchcraft. I’ve never seen you before—”

“If getting married in a summer rose garden not two weeks ago is witchcraft, I would love to know what you call getting turned into a monster for being a prick.”

Adam’s mouth has formed a singular “O” shape; it’s comical, to see him so in shock. But behind his eyes, something dangerous flickers.

“So I’m married to _you_?”

“Yes.” Now that the first flurry is done, Belle is even. “I am your wife. And you are sick with magic.”

“Me? Married to a girl in a country apron? With flyaway hair she can’t get tucked in?” He flicks at her locks with disdain. “You are no more a princess than I am a wildebeest.”

Belle laughs in his face.

“Cogsworth! Chapeau!” Adam howls down the hall. “Get this girl to a dungeon! Or just—just away. Everyone get away!”

The door slams fast on Belle, but she is still laughing as she walks back to her room. The servants cower in the kitchens, hearing Adam scream and throw his slippers and Belle laugh against the sound.

And still the magic doesn’t break. 


	4. Bewitched

With the door of her room closed, Belle lets her laughter dwindle and cease. Yes, the situation is funny; but it’s also frightening, and she laughed at the Prince more to be stubborn, or try to rouse him back to himself, then because it brought her joy. 

Belle slumps against her door, and lets herself think.

This was her Adam, now. Preening, and snobbish, and very close to cruel. She could still hear him yelling, even though she was so far away; it sounded like he was throwing shoes. 

Belle lets her head rest in her arms, and cries for the man she has lost.

* * *

“Who _is_ she? How can she be married to _me_? What are you _talking_ about?!”

Cogsworth sighs. He is trying to be patient. 

“Your wife, sir. She is your wife.”

“But _how?!_ ” Adam is howling. He’s also gotten his old wig out, from somewhere; he complained about the amount of “animal fur” on it, but he brushed it off and put it on. _He looks like an idiot,_ thinks Cogsworth. Still, the major domo knows to keep his thoughts to himself. 

“Sir, pardon the impertinence, but what is the last thing you remember?”

“Why…..the ball. Getting ready for the ball, and then the dancing. Why? Was she one of those girls?” Adam is horrified. “My god, man, did I _marry_ one?! How much did you let me drink?!”

“Sir, you did not drink anything that night. Or else, you may have, but I was indisposed to notice.” Which was all a fantastic way of saying _I turned into a clock, and the pain of feeling my heart turn to toothed metal and my face get trapped in gold was enough to make me faint dead away.  
_

“Indisposed?! _Indisposed?!_ ” Adam hisses and throws his cosmetics across the floor: _pouf-pouf, clank_. “What is wrong with my servants?! First they give me lip, then that insufferable vixen mocks me in my own rooms; now you’ve lapsed in your most fundamental duties!”

“Sir, I—”

No. Adam is too far gone. “You’re all acting so _comfortable_! Where’s your propriety!? Where is the _discipline_?! Lumiere tried to embrace me—you’re contradicting me—has she bewitched you all?!”

“Well….’unbewitched’ is more the word, considering the curse, but it lacks grammatical effect,” says Cogsworth, then quickly draws back as Adam slams his hand on the table.

“How _dare_ you speak to me that way! Get out of my sight! And take the little witch with you! No, actually, I’ll do you one better—” The prince’s lips quirk up at the corners; the malice in his eyes is unmistakable. “Keep her here with me, and I’ll make an example of her to the villagers. Marrying a prince in his _sleep_! Unbelievable. Get out! And send me in a mimosa, god—”

Cogsworth only just leaves the room, and his exit is marked by a badly aimed hairbrush. On the stairs, he is met by Madame de Garderobe.

“Still a temperamental terror?” asks the great lady. 

“Pray that the magic breaks soon.”

“I have no hope in magic,” says Garderobe. “But perhaps you could cheer him up? We have a ball tonight, after all. The Prince still enjoys the music, no?”

“Well…yes, he does enjoy the stuff.”

“There!” Garderobe claps him on the back, and Cogsworth nearly chokes. “I will tell him, to soothe his little baby nerves. That gorgeous heap of  _spazzatura_ may look forward to the dancing. And perhaps we can bring him back to Belle…”

“How can you not hope in magic, yet still believe in miracles?” Cogsworth grumps.

“Send him to me,” Garderobe demands. “I will talk him round to sense. And send Belle to me as well, a few moments after. I do not believe in miracles, but I may believe in love.”

“I believe in a nice cup of tea,” mutters the major domo, and is just about to fetch himself one when he hears a crash from up the stairs.


	5. Bothered

Garderobe purses her lips as the two go at it.

“It’s witchcraft! Witchcraft, I tell you!”

“No, you silly ponce, look at that ring on your finger! We’re married, whether you like it or not.”

Adam sneers at his wife. Belle clenches her fists and glares at her husband.

“Little ones! So, fine, your love is….faltering.” Garderobe intervenes before the little signora can throw a punch. “You cannot remember, that is all!”

“I remember well enough,” says Belle sharply. 

“Yes, yes! So you must be ultra-sympathetic to _il principe_.” She pats the little queen on her head. Tut, young love is so tempestuous! “Try to learn each other again, is all I am saying. Talk to each other! There still may be something to be gained. And remember, there is a ball tonight!” And, trilling the last sentence as a song, the lady leaves the room.

“Fine.” Adam puts his feet up on the back of the harpsichord, and sips his coffee. “So you’re my wife. Somehow. What….what on _earth_ do we have in common?”

“Books,” says Belle, subdued. She has turned her back to him, and gazes out at the rose garden below. The Prince is surprised at how beautiful she looks. She’s only a peasant girl, really, but…..it’s strange. He likes the way the sun catches in her hair.

“What books do you read?” He still sounds condescending, but there’s a vague interest there. “The penny romances of the village, I suppose?”

“Shakespeare.” Belle still won’t look at him. “And Voltaire, thanks to you. And we read _Gulliver’s Travels_ together _,_ do you remember?”

“I haven’t read _Gulliver’s Travels_ yet.”

“No, you wouldn’t think so.”

The library is still. Adam watches the girl at the window. She is ill bred, and plain, and she treats him as an equal—but he finds something about her intriguing and impossible. Something inside him struggles up, despite all his father’s words, despite all his armor and his petty malice. 

“Would you do me the honor of dancing with me at tonight’s ball?”

She looks at him once, and a small smile flicks across her face.

“Well,” she says. “At least until the magic passes. It might make you laugh, to hear of it afterward.”

“I can’t imagine myself _laughing_ about it. And you ought to be gracious that I bothered to ask; I’m the most eligible prince in the realm.” 

“Are you, now?” Belle leans in, close, and whispers. “Show me how that’s so.”


	6. Bewildered

Belle straightens her skirt as she exits Garderobe’s room. _Goodness_. That was….an experience. She wipes Adam’s lipstick from her neck, and tries to catch her breath before the servants see.

She still doesn’t like this Adam at all, she says to herself.. Before today, she had doubted that Agathe had done right by cursing the Prince— _surely_ , she had thought _, there were simpler ways to bring a man around to kindness?_

But no. This Adam so badly needed to be turned into a beast that Belle wishes she could do it herself. On the other hand….oh, there’s lipstick on her other hand as well. Belle blushes red and runs to her room.

* * *

Adam unties his cravat and tries to breathe again. He tells himself that he does not like this Belle-person. She’s too strange! She loves her father, so, in ways he cannot understand; he does not know why she is so kind to the staff. They are only servants! She is only a peasant! A peasant with unusually sweet-smelling lips. 

He gropes for his champagne.

All right, all right, _fine_ : he can see something in her that he likes. She _argues_ with him, for one thing; no one ever dares do that. The way she sparkled her ring in the sun was vaguely intriguing. Her utter distaste for his expensive clothes—it was unbelievable, hadn’t she heard of couture?!She had handed him this worn blue coat like he _wanted_ it—surprised him. And on the couch, just now—she is, in the oddest way, charming.

And for some reason, he wants to _impress_ her. He doesn’t know why. The fact that she clearly liked him more when he asked about books than when he brought up fashion and courtly gossip is stunning. And strange. And alarming.

 And _unbelievably_ attractive. 

* * *

Plumette helps Belle get dressed. When the maid entered, Belle had been busily scrubbing at her face and arms (though she missed a spot on the back of the neck; Plumette smiles at the mark); now she sits at her vanity, preparing for tonight’s ball.

“I am going to impress him,” says Belle, so suddenly that Plumette drops her brush. “He thinks he’s so high-and-mighty now; if I can’t turn him into a Beast, and I can’t turn him back into Adam, then I’m going to one-up him while I can.”

“One….one-up him?”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Belle. “He’s utter trash. I want to go trashier.” 

“…..right.”

“D’you know,” says Belle, feigning casualness, “he’s not a bad kisser, even as a terrible Prince.”

This time Plumette drops the brush on purpose. Rummaging underneath the vanity table is a great way to stifle laughter.

“Really?”

“I suppose he forgot a trick or two over the years of the curse,” says Belle, looking at her nails so obviously Plumette almost chokes. She sends the hairbrush farther behind the vanity. “I mean, obviously I don’t like him, he’s still an awful person, but he’s…..well. Different.” 

“Mmm.” _Sacre bleau._

“Anyway,” says Belle, taking her mind off the sofa in Garderobe’s room, and the very intriguing techniques Adam had displayed there, “I want you to go all the way, tonight. Glitter. Garbage. Anything fashionable you can think of. I can’t humiliate him by turning him into a monster, but I can humiliate him by being better at this game than he is.”

“And….the point of this is?” _Merde_. Plumette has found the hairbrush. She has no more excuse for remaining under this table, stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth, trying to hold in the giggles.

“To tell him a good story about it, once the magic passes and he remembers!” Belle checks her eye shadow in the mirror. “And. You know. To win.”

“Ah,” says Plumette. _Trash Prince,_ thinks Plumette, _meet your Trash Bride._ “So. Diamonds in the hair, then?”

“Every jewel in the palace, if we can manage it.”

The ball is only an hour away. Belle prepares to meet the Prince.


	7. Jewel of the Kingdom

“I did not miss this at all.”

Cogsworth sighs as he watches the dance floor. The twirling ladies—the dazzling chandeliers—and the Prince, in the middle of it all, preening as a peacock, with a black velvet coat that sparkles with gems. It brings the major domo back, far too far back, to the terrible high life before the curse. To serve such a shallow master brings Cogsworth no joy. 

“Look at him. The idiot. Not a thought in his head of us! Or of his wife!”

“Oh, I think he is wondering after his wife,” says Plumette, appearing at his side. “His eyes flick to the stairs. He waits for her.”

“Hmph! Well, it’s a dashed annoying state of affairs.”

“A beautiful night, _non_?” Lumiere turns up, and kisses his darling on the cheek. “Cogsworth! Don’t tell me you hate this display of hedonism.”

“I hate this display of hedonism.”

“There’s my friend.” He nudges him, and gestures to the Prince. “ _Mauvais sort, non?_ But Belle will solve it, certainly.”

“Yes, yes, if anybody can fix it, it’ll be Belle.” Cogsworth wags his head. “She has that farm-girl charm to her; so simple and so wholesome and so— _ow!_ ”

Lumiere smacks him on the arm. His gaze is averted. His mouth is hanging slightly open.

“ _Ow!_ Don’t do tha—oh. _Oh_. Oh my word.” Cogsworth’s mouth hangs open too.

Plumette giggles, and nods her signal to Chapeau. The lights dim, and Adam’s ice blue eyes slit before they wander to the stairs—and then they widen, and cannot look away.

Belle glitters in the dark. 

Her gown must be ten feet wide, at least. On every inch of her are gemstones: vibrant rubies, thickset sapphires, emeralds that climb up into her hair and rest among feathers and pearls and beads. Every other lady of the court wears white, but Belle wears deepest, darkest red, in glowing silk; and the bracelets on her arms and the golden trim upon her train reflect and dazzle and sparkle, until she looks like a living rose. 

Her diamonds flash as she descends to the Prince. He only stares at her, wordless, his eyes wide and bright and blue. She must be wearing every jewel in the kingdom. She must _be_ the jewel of the kingdom.

“My Prince.” She curtsies, smirking up at him through vivid red lipstick and a golden mask of makeup. 

“Tell me this is witchcraft,” he whispers.

“You monster.” She grins up at him. “Let me tell you, I’m your wife.”

Garderobe hits her note, right on cue, and the two go whirling away into dance: Adam’s hand fixed tight on Belle’s waist, their eyes fixed only on each other. The other dancers flock away from the floor, and leave it for the two peacocks circling in the center.

Adam cannot stop staring at her. She has beat him at his own game—and she is so tremendous, beauty beyond beauty….

Belle smiles as this noble Prince, so unrecognizable to her as her Adam, spins her out across the floor. For tonight, she gets to be a Princess; Belle, the odd-one-out from Villeneuve, gets to put on the mask and join the party as a careless, carefree royal. She gets to dance in the arms of a Prince—and, what’s even better, laugh with her ordinary Adam about it in the morning. 

“Why are you smiling?” he asks, entranced. 

“You only love me because I am beautiful,” says Belle. “My husband loves me for so much more.”

“Wench,” he says, but he does not mean it, and his eyes glitter in the light. With one grand gesture, he sweeps her up in his arms and spins her for a lark.

The clock strikes midnight. The tapers go out. Plumette clutches Lumiere’s arm in the dark.

“Oh my god,” says Adam’s voice, from the middle of the room. “Why are you dressed like _that?!_ ”

“What, is this Princess not good enough for you?” Belle does an excellent imitation of the Prince’s haughty sneer.

“ _Belle_ is good enough,” says Adam. The candles flicker up again. In the middle of the room, the Princess curtsies to her Prince—her real one, her actual one, the one who likes worn blue coats and _Gulliver’s Travels_ and who lets magic pass him by with a weary sigh. Adam’s face is sweet and kind and astonished.

“You—you look beautiful! Oh, my god, what—what was I acting like?”

“Yourself. Before the curse.”

“You—you—oh god, you _met_ him? Was he an ass to you? Tell me he wasn’t an ass to you.”

“A complete one. You need to apologize to Madame de Garderobe. And Cogsworth. And everyone, actually.”

“Oh, my god.” Adam can’t stop staring—first at Belle and all her glamor, then down at his own lace and gems and jewels. “I’m so embarrassed. Please tell me he didn’t insult you.”

Belle’s first thought is of the morning, when the sun shone down on the dark face and the sullen eyes. But then she thinks of the afternoon, and—

“Actually,” she says, “I think he could teach you a thing or two.” Her voice drops to a whisper, and she leans in intoxicatingly close. “You have more passion, but he showed me….a few courtly maneuvers.”

Makeup can’t cover how red Adam blushes. But he grins a little, too.

“I hope you didn’t forget that you’re married, madam?”

“Your majesty! How could I ever?” 

“I won’t stand for your impertinence,” he laughs, and spins Belle across the ball with easy grace. 

The two bewitch each other, and the ball glows golden in the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted over on lumiereswig.tumblr.com; now here because amnesia fics are fucking life. Go check out the tumblr for more trash fics involving these idiots!


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